Our story with Kinsta hosting – support and speed

Well, you want some true story, right? So this will be one about Kinsta hosting, guys that do managed WordPress hosting, and our over 3 years of experience with them.

How we have met?

Back in a days I was pretty regular reader of smashing magazine, as there was always something to learn, and they do bring quality content.

Lucky for me, this is where Mark Gavalda, the CEO of Kinsta, decided to publish his guest writing about importance of proper hosting for WordPress sites. He explained there what is managed hosting, and why it is important, if you are serious about your business.

It was eye opening article for me, that if we want to succeed we have to invest in speed. Of course speed of our website. As you can imagine Kinsta hosting was one of proposed option there, so I definitely wanted to check them out.

Decision on managed hosting

Back in 2014 we were hosted by one of biggest Polish shared hosting provider, and we often struggled with down times of our sites. However we paid around $150 per year, and though that it was lot of money.

You can imagine what was my reaction, when I have found out that plan, that meet my requirements, costs $157 per month on Kinsta. I have already made decision that we need to upgrade hosting, but that price was a bit too high. I had to check other options.

Kinsta vs WP Engine – our choice

WP Engine at that time had monthly plans worth $100 and $200 that was interesting for me. I needed WordPress Multisite support, and they were the only one beside Kinsta that offered it. So I have send some questions, and they replied pretty fast – what was good start.

However they wanted to schedule the call, instead of replying to my e-mail. It may sound stupid, but when I ask questions by e-mail I want reply by e-mail. E-mail gives time to think, mainly when you are not native English speaker, and you know nothing about hosting. So it means that I firstly have to translate what I hear to Polish, and next translate “hosting stuff” to my personal understanding. That is way too much to translate for live call from Texas 🙂

Other factor was, that WP Engine counts their plans on page visits, while Kinsta count on data transfer. For me, later made more sense.

I tried pushing for e-mail answer with WP Engine but time was running out, and I wanted to make decision before I will really feel how much money I am about to pay from now on.

Starting with Kinsta hosting

So in October 2014 we have decide to go with Kinsta. They have moved all our sites to their servers, and configured everything we needed on server, like protecting certain domain with passwords, or setting nginx with sub-domain wildcard for multi-site installation.

I still remember when for the first time I have logged to WordPress admin panel on the new server. When I clicked through various subpages, it felt like I was using application on my computer – this is how fast was response time. There was almost no lag. I wondered how it is even possible, after all there is so many stages that have to be done to send me back requested page and what is more, WordPress admin panel never felt quick to me. Not until then, when each new page loaded in like 0.5 second!

That was first WOW for me, and stayed that way for all that time.

Problem solvers

When I started with Kinsta hosting, they were very fresh on the market, and had some staff shortage. Back then I have scolded them for long time answers. They had so much work that Mark Gavalda had to work on my issues personally to help his team. But this is how it is when you get such rapid increase of customers, and you need to expand quickly.

I am sure they had many long sleepless nights cause of that. However it was back then in 2014. Now I don’t remember to wait longer then 10 minutes for answer and, in most cases, solution.

Here is were managed hosting by Kinsta really shines. No matter what I needed they usually did it for me in matter of minutes. Whenever I find my site down for some strange reason, I don’t have to wait few hours for answer what is happening. Just logging to Kinsta hosting admin panel and lunching chat – someone is ready to help you there.

Kinsta was first company that I experienced using Intercom for support. Cause of them, now I am spoiled and every time I see someone using Intercom, I expect same fast response times. However usually it doesn’t happen.

Care for current client by Kinsta hosting

One thing that many companies forgot while fighting for new deals, is their current client. It is said it is up to 30 times harder to get new client, then to keep current one. I feel that Kinsta knows that very well.

Recently they had to move all clients that were still on old servers(that Kinsta started on), to new one that are in Google Cloud Platform. On one hand it was great news for us, cause it meant that we will get even faster page loads and lower pings.

However there were also bad news: new plans costed more, and had lower “limits”, like less sites, less transfer and less disk space. However speed doesn’t come for free, like we have talked before.

Again I had to look for alternatives, cause our sites got too big over these 3 years, and it would require for me to pay 2 times more for hosting if I would stay with Kinsta. While I checked other hosting providers, even HostGator(cause they spammed me with adverts on YouTube), I sadly realized there is no real concurrency that could handle my sites for reasonable price.

That is when Dora Vegh from Kinsta stepped in. She offered me extending disk space and transfer, so they could safely move my sites to Google Cloud. That was really nice move, they showed that they really care. Finally I have found a way to optimize my sites, so they will fit in original limit, but they gave me me higher limits anyway. And it was all in old price, no cost increase – WOW!

Conclusion

In today world achieving success alone is close to impossible. You need to be wise, and choose a team of people that know more then you. You need a team, that will cover your back on other fields, while you focus your power on your pony.

For me, Kinsta is such team member, keeping our sites fast and secure. They know everything about hosting so I don’t have to. I can tell you that I really feel secure about my sites with them keeping eye on my server.

If you also care about your business presence you should definitely check them out.

Please use button below to so they will know that you are coming from us. Yes, it is referral link, but this is 100% recommendation from us.

Lead programmer in Apollo13 Themes, often can be seen on Apollo13 support. Working hard on making themes fast and reliable in ever changing WordPress environment. Air. is with Apollo13 almost from the beginning.
Living with Alice & Ali(the dog). Rife Theme FTW!